Transcription:
The Outer Banks Hospital Celebrates 20 Years of Growth and Innovation with Mike Kelly

Denise Schnabel (Host): Hey, everyone. Welcome back to The Outer Banks Health History, the official podcast series of The Outer Banks Hospital Medical Group. This month marks 20 years since the hospital opened. We will be celebrating with weekly episodes that feature guests who will speak about life before The Outer Banks Hospital as well as its early years. We are your hosts, Denise Schnabel.

Wendy Kelly (Host): And I'm Wendy Kelly. We're in for a treat today because our guest is an Outer Banks icon. He's responsible for several high profile restaurants in our community and made his mark by organizing the longest St. Patrick's Day parade in North Carolina. You may know him from Mako Mike's or from Pamlico Jack's or from the famed Kelly's Restaurant and Tavern. Let's welcome, the one and only, Mike Kelly.

Denise Schnabel (Host): Hey, Mike.

Wendy Kelly (Host): Hey, Mike.

Denise Schnabel (Host): How are you?

Mike Kelly: Denise and Wendy, excellent. Nice seeing you today.

Denise Schnabel (Host): Good to see you. So thank you for being here. Before we begin, I would like to tell our listeners that even though they have the same last name, Wendy and Mike are not related.

Wendy Kelly (Host): Thanks, Denise.

Denise Schnabel (Host): You're welcome. Well, you could be long lost cousins or something, you never know.

Wendy Kelly (Host): Could be.

Denise Schnabel (Host): Could be. All right, let's talk to Mike Kelly. Thank you for being here again. So you have done so much for this community. How long have you actually been on the Outer Banks?

Mike Kelly: Since 1972. I graduated from college, took my last exam, came to the Outer Banks and haven't left yet.

Denise Schnabel (Host): That's amazing.

Wendy Kelly (Host): It is amazing. How did you come here? Why did you end up here?

Mike Kelly: I grew up in Elizabeth City and came often to visit during the summers when I was in high school. And then as I got into college, I got a job at a restaurant, enjoyed the business and then just continued to stay and had a lot of friends down here too.

Wendy Kelly (Host): So that was the 1970s?

Mike Kelly: The early '70s. Graduated in '72. Yes.

Wendy Kelly (Host): So do you remember when you came here that there wasn't a hospital?

Mike Kelly: Very easily. But when you're a 21 and 22 years old, the need for a hospital doesn't seem to be as relevant as it does when you're 71 and 72, I will tell you that.

Wendy Kelly (Host): So, did you ever need a hospital?

Mike Kelly: I've need a hospital on more occasions than I thought and all of the services that they offer. Yesterday, I had a colonoscopy. Today, I had an eardrum pierced because I had liquid behind my eardrum. And those are two things you would just never begin to think. And I'm very thankful for the hospital, but I'm very sorry that I'm falling apart.

Wendy Kelly (Host): But we're here for you.

Denise Schnabel (Host): Well, at least you don't have to travel back to Elizabeth City for your healthcare these days, right? You're local and you're all here. So tell us a story. You told us a funny story about your teeth and the fact that there was no medical care for you. Tell us that story.

Mike Kelly: In July of 1967, I was down here visiting some friends, specifically a girlfriend. And we were out on the ocean front in Nags Head, approximately the area of the restaurant right now, on the ocean and having a good time. And her mother went to get us a pizza for lunch, and it was probably about 1:00 or 1:30 by that time. And we were playing around with a surf board. And, of course, we were trying to surf and there was not enough surf to begin to make yourself be able to surf, but I was probably pretty lucky because this was when I was just first starting to learn. And next thing I know, all of a sudden a wave came and we were jerking around. And next thing I know it hit me in the mouth, and busted out. I was very fortunate that this hit me pretty square in the mouth and only busted out about five teeth. And luckily, we had a towel on the beach and we took the towel and stuffed it in my mouth and tried to stop the bleeding and everything and then just get across the street and we made a call. And I don't think we had 911 at that time. Of course, I don't know because we didn't have a cell phone. So you couldn't begin to call from the beach. We just had to walk over to the house. And I can't even recall if the house had a telephone. We probably had to go to like--

Denise Schnabel (Host): The phone booth on the corner.

Mike Kelly: The phone booth on the corner and called and sat there and wait for the ambulance. But, as we waited, the ambulance drove up, but it wasn't an ambulance. It was a station wagon. It was a Ford Fairlane station wagon. It was what Dare County had at that time. And it had some oxygen in there and it had a stretcher that you laid out and they began to look at it. And then, you didn't go to the hospital, which would have been approximately a mile and a half of where the accident happened. We had to go to Elizabeth City, the Albemarle Hospital. And that was probably about 60, probably about 65 miles away. That was a very exciting time.

Wendy Kelly (Host): Do you remember that ride in the Ford Fairlane up there? Were you in pain?

Mike Kelly: I do remember too that my girlfriend's mother looked at me, my teeth and she says, "What am I going to do with these pizzas?" The pizzas were the priority that moment. But anyway, it was just very basic. It was the back of a station wagon with a stretcher and the medication and two EMTs, one driving and one riding shotgun. So I'm very fortunate, was taken care of, but also very happy of what we had to offer on the Outer Banks now to begin to address those kinds of situations. And not that teeth would have grown back any quicker or anything, but I was fortunate it was not catastrophic. It was just a trauma. And it was more trauma for my mother than it was for me, but other than that...

Denise Schnabel (Host): Of course. Well, I got to admit, I was wondering what happened to the pizzas? I was sitting here wondering. So do you remember when they were beginning the whole process of building the hospital? And what was that like in the community? Were you already a restaurant owner by then? Do you remember in 2002?

Wendy Kelly (Host): 2002.

Mike Kelly: 2002? Oh yes. I had my first restaurant. Had worked in ones from 1970 to' 85 and then I bought my first one in 1985. But a lot of politics were involved because there were very few regional hospital operations that wanted to locate in Dare County. We did not have a great deal of population, we're seasonal and they felt that that was not going to be able to address the needs. You have to also realize that in the mid-'70s, we didn't have a single doctor on the Outer Banks. And Dr. Walter Holton came in about '76 or '77 and he was the only doctor on the Outer Banks. Now, I would assume that we probably have 60 to 90 doctors or something on here. I have no idea. You would have.

Denise Schnabel (Host): More than one.

Mike Kelly: We have more than one. But we're stretched out. I mean, to think of not having a doctor on the main part of the Northern Outer Banks, think of what happened on like Hatteras Island, happened in Corolla and things like that.

Denise Schnabel (Host): I can't imagine.

Mike Kelly: It was just what you were taking for granted.

Wendy Kelly (Host): So we've noticed some changes since the hospital came into 2002. What do you think some of the big innovations are from your standpoint and, as a business owner, how did the hospital impact your businesses?

Mike Kelly: It impacted very positively because we'll be having an employee that anything from a bad cold or, you know, whatever the need was, they were available. They were very limited, especially at the beginning because they didn't know what they needed to be getting into. And I'm sure that from 2002 and 2022, that there has been the opportunity and the specialties that we've been needing to have. And just like I said today already, I mean in the last 36 hours, I've had a colonoscopy and again an eardrum pierce. But somebody to take care, to get the liquid out of your inner ear and that was not even around. We were more talking about general practitioners. And what has begin to occur and the population of Dare County is so happy with the hospital and the services that it renders and the mobility that is taken on itself of having people located strategically around the county and a great deal of hospitals and a great deal of services being offered is just a great deal more than anybody would have anticipated at that time ago, and the specialties that doctors offer and that people, they come down and the doctors themselves and their families enjoy relocating to the area. We offer a great deal as far as natural resources and just really enjoyable and it's good to come down and have a job and do what you do.

Wendy Kelly (Host): Being all the way out here, we really are rural. We're as far east as you can get. And to have the services that we have out here is pretty unusual for this kind of community. And most of us, I came one year after the hospital opened, I didn't know what it was like without a hospital. And I think many folks here don't know what it would be like without a hospital.

Mike Kelly: I would remember that a friend of mine, Francis Meekins, who was the owner of the Coastland Times, which was the main public relations, main marketing type thing, main information type of thing for the Outer Banks, and called me up one day when I was sort of at the Dare County Tourist Bureau Board and talked to me, and he was mentioning about a piece of property he had in Kill Devil Hills, which is where the Lowe's is right now. And he was mentioning how people wanted to buy his piece of property and he was not interested in selling it. And he was going to begin to do, and he said, "There's only two things I'll ever do with that property." And he said, "I want you to help me to begin to do one of them." And either one, I don't know, I said, "Well, Mr. Meekins, what is it, the two things that you think is so important?" He said, "One is a hospital," and that was the very first thing. That ended up not being the location of the hospital. But there it is, the person that had a great deal of influence in the county and began to put out a lot of positive comments about the hospital. And this was in the early mid-'90s. And then a short time, seven, eight years later, there was a hospital, but you did saw that and you saw all county commissioner, and the town just wanting to begin to do it. There was up behind the ACE hardware in Nags Head, on the hill, there's a small on-call type of thing. But that's where the EMTs operated out of. They had a landing pad there for a helicopter and I think they had rural ambulances by that time. But that was a big thing and one of the steps about how we progressed so much on the Outer Banks.

Wendy Kelly (Host): We really have.

Denise Schnabel (Host): That's pretty cool that he had the vision, that he would put a hospital on that property. I mean, that's pretty neat. So tell us, you've been here a while, you've seen a lot of things, you've done a lot of things, you've experienced a lot of things. What would you like to see the Outer Banks moving forward? Anything?

Mike Kelly: We have a real need at present for workforce housing. I think if were going to grow into we're going to be able to take care of the people. They come down here to call this their home on a permanent basis, or the people that come down here to begin to vacation and to enjoy this. And there were a great deal of people to come down on a part-time basis and own a property, own a home. And some of them rent them out, some of them don't rent them out. And I know that things such as Airbnb and there are a whole lot more opportunities. And I think we've seen an unbelievable amount of growth in the last two years, but COVID has just affected us significantly different than I ever would have anticipated. And the fact is that all of a sudden, you know, I would never have thought that with a pandemic going on, that we would be busier than we were without a pandemic.

But in having that business, and it presented a challenge to my industry, the hospitality industry, and we were ready to challenge and go after it, but one thing really happened that was also much bigger than I ever thought, there was not enough housing or not enough people to work to begin take care of that. And while that affects the hospitality, it also affects the medical family, et cetera. And there's such a wide variety of different people that you have to have in all those kind of jobs, not only from a dishwasher to a general manager that can take care of it. A typical restaurant would have anywhere from, you know, 25 to 50 people, a few lasts a few more, but that was generally the number of the people they would have. So I think workforce housing is to me, one of the things that we're going to have to do to begin to not only take, but be attractive to the people that come to the Outer Banks and be able to manage them in a professional way that they feel like they've been treated well, not particularly by Joe's Restaurant or John's Place, but by the trainee and everything in general. And I think that would transpire throughout every industry that we have on the Outer Banks.

Wendy Kelly (Host): Absolutely. And we want them to come back too, right? So they had a good experience. We want them to come back.

Mike Kelly: Exactly. Thank you, Wendy.

Wendy Kelly (Host): So I wonder if the parade, Kelly's parade, will be bigger this year? Do you think, with more people?

Denise Schnabel (Host): And it was canceled the last two years.

Mike Kelly: The last few years, we were canceled. In 2020, we talked to Health and Human services. Sheila Davis did a great job of communicating.

Wendy Kelly (Host): She was awesome.

Denise Schnabel (Host): She's amazing.

Mike Kelly: She said, "No problem. We will support you." And I said, "We have COVID on the perimeter here. We do not know what COVID is." As a population, we didn't know, we had no idea in March of 2020 what COVID was going to entail and how it would affect us. And the governor had his first press conference on TV and on radio and everything else. And when he got off, Sheila called me within an hour and he said, "Mike, I think that we're not going to be able to support you with your parade." Mainly because they didn't know what was going to begin to happen too.

Wendy Kelly (Host): That's right.

Denise Schnabel (Host): Right. Nobody knew.

Mike Kelly: We canceled the parade as a public service factor, so that everything would go. And then last year, we tried to put it together, but it just wasn't getting any footing anywhere for us when the COVID was beginning to happen. So we're real excited this year. We think that there was a great deal of enthusiasm and excitement about the parade about this situation where people get out. And it's always the Sunday before St. Patrick's day or the Sunday after. My children, my two grandsons, they used to carry the banner of the parade. And they've gotten to be 14 and 10. The 14-year-old said, "Grandpa, I can't carry the banner this year." Well, he's playing some baseball, but he's also 14 and that's not what he wants to do.

Denise Schnabel (Host): That's not cool.

Wendy Kelly (Host): I hear you.

Mike Kelly: But my other granddaughter, six, that was three when the last time we had a parade, she had a level of excitement and enthusiasm that would make up for it. So the youth are the ones that have really carried the parade and get people interested and the families go and they realize they have such a good time.

Denise Schnabel (Host): Absolutely.

Mike Kelly: So anyway, we're excited and we think it's going to be on the 20th of March. It starts at 1:00 PM. It will probably last until about 2:30, 3:00 and looking forward to it. And we're looking forward to congratulating The Outer Banks Hospital for being here for 20 years and not only congratulating them, but thanking them and their expansion and everything they've done. And then likewise, we had, in 2020, Coastal, if you may, was our grand marshall and they're backing them up because they're in their 22nd anniversary. So between people and dogs, we'll have it all covered.

Wendy Kelly (Host): We're very excited to be co-marshals this year and we can't wait.

Denise Schnabel (Host): We're so excited.

Wendy Kelly (Host): We've got our float all planned and we're going to have our team members that have 20 years of service on the float.

Mike Kelly: Excellent.

Denise Schnabel (Host): So I have to ask, because that's one of my favorite events living in this town, is the St. Patrick's Day parade. Tell us how it got started.

Mike Kelly: We had a staff retreat and we retreated to Sanderling and did something on one afternoon and then the next morning, and when we were closed for business that night. And I think it was in January or February in probably about 1988 or 1989. And we were talking about things in training, et cetera, and everything, as far as the hospitality business. And then we had a miscellaneous time when we began to talk about things that should be done on the Outer Banks. And it was my idea that the Outer Banks did not have a parade. We had a parade mainly in Christmas and they did a really good job with that, but on the beach itself. And we were very limited to the timeframes that we could begin to have parades. In the summertime, we were way too crowded and too much traffic and everybody, the local people couldn't get involved. And then in September and October were potential hurricane type times.

Denise Schnabel (Host): Not a good idea.

Mike Kelly: And you didn't want to begin to do it like that. And January and February were probably a little bit too chilly. And so we really got it down to March was a time. And we being Kelly's Restaurant, so we decided it to be Kelly's St. Patrick's Day Parade. And it dovetailed and did an excellent fit. Gene O'Bleness, who was the then Director of the Dare County Tourist Bureau, he just began to say, "Mike, this is great. This kicks off the year. And it gets everybody excited. It gets all the local people." And the one thing I will say is that we've done no advertising out of the area. He kept all the marketing limited to Dare County itself not for any other reason than to say Outer Banks family affair. And I tell people that, "If you want to go to the parade, we'd love for you to go. And I think that you'll really enjoy it." But I'll tell you two things, it is not Macy's.

Denise Schnabel (Host): It's better than Macy's.

Mike Kelly: But it is Norman Rockwell.

Wendy Kelly (Host): It is.

Denise Schnabel (Host): It's amazing.

Mike Kelly: And if anybody knows anything about Norman Rockwell, It's just you have the garbage truck being followed by the Outer Banks Dance studio, to be followed by the Boy Scouts, to be followed by the termite pest control type people. And they're all having a good time. They're marketing their business, they're seeing their friends and other things and, guaranteed, you'll get five times more candy than you do on Halloween.

Denise Schnabel (Host): Absolutely.

Mike Kelly: It's very spontaneous. You organize it, you get people to come out, you tell them what they can't do, what they need to do. They need to be careful with children around the floats and things like that and everything else. But you sort of let them wing the rest of it, because you can't begin to be in charge of every portion of it.

Denise Schnabel (Host): That's what makes it great.

Wendy Kelly (Host): I've always look forward to it. It's great. And we can't wait to march in it.

Denise Schnabel (Host): It's my favorite. Yeah. So we'll see you on the 20th. Any other thoughts about the Outer Banks and healthcare before the hospital? Anything else you want to share?

Mike Kelly: Well, I hope that I'm around to be here for the 40th anniversary of the Outer Banks Hospital.

Wendy Kelly (Host): So do we.

Denise Schnabel (Host): You will.

Mike Kelly: Again, it's sort of like the parade. I can't begin to think of all the things that we will be expecting and how medicine and care will be taken care of and how it will begin to expand and what it will begin to do.

I've been happy because for all those needs that have had to be met, that The Outer Banks Hospital has done a wonderful job of ponying up and filling those voids and being able to offer services that we had only imagined this 10 to 20 years earlier, maybe didn't even imagine. But now, they're beginning to be a staple part of the industry and part of what you begin to do. And again, thank you both for your involvement and the people that we've had on the frontline and administration have been wonderful over the years. We've benefited from their knowledge and their wanting to work and wanting to offer things that begin to happen. So I am excited about the fact of potential in what we're going to be able to offer in the future.

Wendy Kelly (Host): You have always been a big supporter of the hospital and we really thank you for that, Mike, and we thank you for joining us today too.

Mike Kelly: Oh, thank you, Wendy. And thank you, Denise.

Denise Schnabel (Host): Absolutely.

So if you've enjoyed this podcast, share it on your social channels. To hear more Outer Banks, Health history, check out the library at theobh.com/podcast. This is your host, Denise Schnabel. Stay safe.